CMV: We should not desecrate dead bodies we find from ancient civilizations

What is a dead human? Unless you have a close personal relationship, it's just that, a dead human. A carcass. Nothing but bones, sometimes conserved skin. If we can learn from their bodies, I don't see a reason why we shouldn't. Noone is hurt. Noone is disadvantaged. Nothing is lost.

How can wow learn about history if we don’t study it? We can’t know what’s in those tombs if we don’t open them. We can’t learn about how ancient people were honored, treated, or buried if we don’t uncover bodies to learn how they were preserved.

Desecration of dead bodies matter to the living culture that inhumed the body.

Ancient civilizations tend to not be around to care about what happens to the dead body.

Ancient civilizations that are still around do object to desecration of their dead. Like most major religions or natives. And the usual policy is to not touch those dead bodies.

So it's ok to open ancient egyptian tombs because that civilization doesn't exist anymore. Same thing for ancient rome, greece, mayas and aztecs.

Ancient scottish tombs might be trickier due to possible angry scots.

I also think there might be a bit of a etnocentric bias going on here, a bit of cultural disrespect. It always seems to be non-western cultures that get their graves raided and looted. Yes, it was a long time ago. But where is the limit to how much time must pass before it's OK to desevrate a grave? 100 years? 500 years? 1000 years? Will we even dig up George Washington's grave? I highly doubt it, because he's our guy. We don't want to disturb native American burial grounds either, but the dead bodies of cultures not connected to us seems OK to bother.

Go to pretty much any archeological museum in the world and you will proabably find bodies that were buried in that country on display, with the objects buried and a display telling us what the body and the grave tell us about who this person was and how they lived. In my local museum we have skeletons of some of Iceland's first settlers, in Denmark they have their own neolithic tombs, the famous Ötzi in Italy (although he was never in a tomb). The bodies of European monarchs, when known, are also regularly studied to give us insight into their health and life. I am almost certain that Washington's body has also been taken out of the tomb and studied at some point.

As for what we gain from digging up these bodies? Knowledge of how people of the past lived. Note that I emphasize "the past" not "the ancient world" because large parts of archeology deal with more recent things. In Austria for example, you can find graves from the 18th century where the teeth have been smashed with a brick to prevent them coming back as vampires.

And as has been stated repeatedly here, its a long dead body. Anyone that knew them has died a long time ago. Its basically just a carcass, the memory of the human being has long faded away. Until it is found, studied and then ends up on a display where a plaque tells us about who that person was, how they lived and how they died. I would argue that is the closest thing we can come to "remembering" long dead people, and probably lot more respectful than to leave them to rot to dust in their tombs.

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I really agree with this. When Britian Colonized Egypt. They grounded up mummies and turned them into perfume. Just disgusting.

Show me why it's worth it

Worth what? What harm is being done?

The harm in digging up bodies comes from the emotional damage caused to those that have some relation to the person (familial / cultural / whatever). There is no harm being done when it comes to a body from a civilization that no longer exists.

Here's my perspective, as an American archaeologist (of European ancestry) who works primarily on archaeological sites of indigenous eastern North American peoples.

We should not desecrate dead bodies we find from ancient civilizations

Categorically agree that we should not desecrate human remains. But the term "desecrate" is very much one that is up to the observer. Archaeological excavations aren't automatically classifiable as desecration.

I feel like there's an argument to be had for bringing in artifacts, since they might be better preserved under the care of museum professionals. But when it comes specifically to dead bodies buried in tombs and such, I don't think we need to bring them up to the surface, run tests and experiments on them, and then show them off to people like it's not the corpse of a dead individual. If it's not a tomb then I guess it might be different, you can't just leave them there so you might as well take a close look.

The remains of ancient humans can tell us a great deal about the lives of the people in those cultures. There are many limitations, but we can learn about health, diseases that people coped with, the effects of the adoption of agriculture on various populations, the way that people moved around the landscape (i.e., migration patterns), and so on.

In the end, the remains of a person are just objects. Whatever meaning they have, whatever information they may provide, and whatever significance they have, is up to us to assign.

That said, the remains of ancient humans in different places are the ancestors of different modern peoples. And so we need to take into account the beliefs and cultural perspectives and values of those people in deciding how (or if) we are going to excavate and study their ancestors.

I also think there might be a bit of a etnocentric bias going on here, a bit of cultural disrespect. It always seems to be non-western cultures that get their graves raided and looted. Yes, it was a long time ago. But where is the limit to how much time must pass before it's OK to desevrate a grave? 100 years? 500 years? 1000 years? Will we even dig up George Washington's grave? I highly doubt it, because he's our guy. We don't want to disturb native American burial grounds either, but the dead bodies of cultures not connected to us seems OK to bother.

Archaeology in the West is overwhelmingly done by mostly Western European ("white") people. This is not something that we in the archaeological community are unaware of, or proud of. Increasingly we recognize the problem that this creates, in part because not having a diversity of world views and cultural perspectives and voices within our discipline can limit our ability to interpret. We need different perspectives.

Beginning in the 1960s, but really during the 1970s through the late 1980s, Native American voices in the US increasingly pushed for legal solutions to a long-standing problem of American archaeologists. Most archaeologists prior to the late 1980s and early 1990s just dug up Native American graves if they were found, regardless of anything else. They were treated just as another kind of artifact, despite the fact that they were the remains of people.

In 1990, the US government passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which set in place strict procedures for how indigenous American remains and associated objects were to be treated in archaeological sites, and in museum collections. Without going too far down the rabbit hole, the purpose was to give Native Americans a say in how their ancestors' remains were treated.

The first major test of this law was Kennewick Man. Things were handled about as poorly as they possibly could have been. There was a media circus, and the NAGPRA law was poorly represented to the American public. However, since the original incident, after many years new tests confirmed what was argued by the Native American groups who claimed the remains-- he was related to their direct ancestors.

Today, practicing archaeologists in the US can no longer just dig up remains. There are strict laws in place for how unmarked graves are to be handled. We can't simply dig them up, put them in a box, and run tests on them.

Today, if we find remains in an archaeological site, we have to contact law enforcement, as well as all federally-recognized Native American tribal organizations within a given region who have ancestral claims to that area. Through an extensive consultation process, we discuss and figure out how any remains are to be handled. Some groups have little concern, others are very involved.

In the end, this process has given historically marginalized Native American groups a voice in how their ancestors' remains are treated. It's a very important historical change in American archaeology, and the vast majority of modern archaeologists agree with it.

Despite that, for a long time, you'd see Reddit posts that basically whined... "But, the science" or complained that because they felt that their remains would be unimportant, that we should all feel that way.

But that's not how it works. We choose to recognize that our viewpoint isn't the only one that matters, and that it's important to hear other peoples' voices and respect their wishes. Through dialogue, we can still push science forward, but increasingly we can do it respectfully and in accordance with the cultural traditions and wishes of the groups who are, generally speaking, far more closely related to any remains that we might dig up.

Now, is this the same in all parts of the world?

Of course not. The US has a complex and troubled history when it comes to the treatment of Native peoples, and the way that NAGPRA has been developed and applied directly reflects that. In other parts of the world, there's less concern, and less opposition.

It's very much contextual.

The bottom line is this: Desecration is never okay.

Is grave excavation desecration? To some groups, it is. And the views of those groups should be listened to, and respected.